Screencastify vs ShareX Comparison 2026
Screencastify records from a Chrome extension and adds classroom features, questions inside the video, collected replies, group assignments, free for ten videos total before Starter at $7 a user a month billed annually. ShareX is a free, open source Windows capture tool with no paid tier at all, built for screenshots, scrolling pages and quick recordings chained straight into an upload. Screencastify is a teaching tool with a price tag. ShareX is a power user's capture utility that has never charged anybody.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Screencastify | ShareX | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $7 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | None | Not stated |
| API | Not stated |
Screencastify
Screen recording built for classrooms
Screencastify records the screen from a Chrome extension and adds what a teacher needs and a marketer does not: questions inside the video, collected replies, and a way to ask thirty people to record something back. It works for a plain product demo too. The free plan stops at ten videos of thirty minutes each.
Our note
The ten-video free allowance is a lifetime cap rather than a monthly one, so the free plan is a trial with no clock on it. Anybody recording weekly should price Starter from the start.
ShareX
Screen capture and recording, open source
ShareX captures a region, a window, a scrolling page or the whole screen, records video and GIFs, and then runs whatever steps you set afterwards: annotate, upload, copy the link back. It has been in development for eighteen years and it uploads to a long list of destinations, including one you host yourself. Windows only, free, and it wants no account.
Our note
For capture and share on Windows nothing paid does the job better, and the custom uploader support is genuinely rare. The moment a recording has to look edited rather than raw, it is the wrong tool.
Why people weigh these two
- ShareX instead of Screencastify
- ShareX is free open source software with no classroom features, no embedded questions and no collected student replies, just the capture itself.
- Screencastify instead of ShareX
- Screencastify is built for classrooms specifically, with a free tier and a $7 plan, simpler to hand to a student than ShareX's configurable capture-then-upload workflow.
Which one should you pick
Choose Screencastify if recordings need to be answered rather than only watched, with questions embedded in the video and replies collected from a group. The free plan's ten videos are a lifetime cap, not monthly, so it behaves like a trial, and Starter at $7 a month billed annually is worth pricing in from the start for anybody recording weekly.
Choose ShareX if the job is screenshots and quick captures on Windows and the budget is zero, permanently: no paid tier exists, there is no account, and after-capture workflows chain annotation, upload and a copied link without touching the mouse again. It cannot record with the classroom features Screencastify has, and Mac users cannot run it at all, but for capture and share on Windows nothing paid does the job better.
Common questions
- Is ShareX really free with no paid tier at all?
- Yes. It is open source, funded by donations, with no subscription, no account and no advertising, and it has stayed that way through eighteen years of development. Screencastify is free only up to ten total videos before Starter costs $7 a user a month billed annually.
- Can ShareX embed questions in a video like Screencastify does?
- No, nothing in its feature list covers that. ShareX is a capture and upload tool: screenshots, scrolling pages, video and GIFs, chained into automatic workflows. Screencastify's embedded questions and collected replies are built specifically for teaching, which ShareX does not attempt.
- Does ShareX work on a Mac?
- No, it is Windows only. Screencastify runs as a Chrome extension, so it works on any computer running Chrome, Mac included, which matters for a mixed-platform classroom or team.
- Which one uploads captures to my own server?
- ShareX supports custom uploaders, sending captures to your own server or storage bucket rather than somebody else's cloud, which is genuinely rare among free tools. Screencastify shares by link with privacy controls but does not offer a comparable self-hosted upload destination.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.